


Of the smell of apples and lemons

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Gen, Marriage, Outtakes, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:10:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What else might have occurred after the wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Not words, not music or rhyme I want, only the hum of your valvèd voice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073318) by [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/pseuds/emmadelosnardos). 



August 2, 1863 Night

Mary had thought she would have trouble sleeping. She had napped earlier in the day and felt the thrum of her decision, their decision to marry the next day, all through her body. The grey organdy felt at once too tight and light a cloud touching her only lightly at wrist and neck. The sash constrained her and tied her together like the ribbon on a gift. She could still feel Jedediah’s kiss upon her cheek, his lips soft, his beard silkier than she would have imagined. They had returned to decorum anticipating the wedding but she could not help wondering how it would have felt if he had acceded to her request and not she to his. Betty would be happily ensconced at her sister Martha’s, nursing a cup of tea without interruption and she would be climbing the stairs with Jed following? Waiting for him in her room, wearing her ivory peignoir and her unbraided hair? Already in his arms, his mouth at her throat, wanton, unrepentant, exulting? 

She released a breath which was not quite a sigh. She did want to be his wife but worry beset her. She was sure she loved him and that he loved her but what of the children? How would it be to start their married life together for so brief a time and then to be parted for an unknown period? There was so much of him she did not know yet, not only his past and plans for the future, but the small things she would have learned during a traditional courtship—his domestic preferences, how it would feel to hold only his hand, how he would behave when she disappointed him in some way. They had worked together but that was not necessarily an adequate paradigm for a marriage and the War’s intensity caused distortions neither of them had the context to appreciate. She would simply have to trust him and trust that he would listen when she spoke as he has so carefully read her letters. A longer engagement was another casualty of the War it seemed.

She got ready for bed alone and the silk peignoir hung still in the wardrobe while she pulled on her muslin nightdress, trimmed only with a few pleats and strung with a faded blue ribbon. She washed her face and rebraided her hair in two plaits. The actions were familiar but now were overlaid with the awareness of being final; tomorrow night, even if she wore the same gown and arranged her hair in the same way, Jedediah would be watching her from the bed or waiting to knock on the door. His breath would stir the night with her own. She would lie in the bed with a man beside her again, but she could not expect Jedediah to be like Gustav in any way. She thought she would lie awake, her eyes unwilling to shut and gaze at the ceiling as if answers were traced there for her to find but she was wrong. The sheets were cool against her and after only a few moments, she slept. And she dreamt.

It was the way of dreams to be real and not-real, her dream self untroubled by the difference. She found herself at the front door again, his knock an alert, not a demand but not timid. She was wearing the rose-pink muslin just as she had, but when she opened the door to him, they were not alone. Mattie was at her skirt, his hands bunched up in the cloth. She wanted to embrace Jed, to draw him inside, to feel him upon her as she had in the day. But there was Mattie, his hands still grubby from play, peering around the wide bell of her crinoline. She felt his anxiety and confusion with her own anticipation and excitement. In the moment when she wanted only to be Mary, or maybe Jed’s dearest, what they both heard was “Aunt Mary?” in Mattie’s treble, a question to her and to Jed. So she must bid him enter as Dr. Foster and Joe called out from another room as Jed called her Baroness von Olhausen. She could not correct him. And then the beginning was not entirely sweet, nor colored by the passion they shared, but tinged with the bitterness of what would hold her in Boston, how he still saw her as Gustav’s widow. She looked at him as she had in the day, but the gleam in his beautiful eyes seemed dimmed or clouded. She was unsure if he had regrets. She introduced Mattie as best she could and tried to guide him away from her skirts and towards Joe, who played on the rug in the parlor. It was only the promise of cakes to be served with the coffee she offered Jed that convinced Mattie to go and wash his hands and join his brother. Mattie had drifted away, down the hall, and she felt Jed catch her hand in his in the folds of the pink muslin. He stroked his thumb against the palm of her hand and she flushed as she had in the day when he had pressed himself entirely against her until they nearly disgraced themselves.

The dream shifted, without time or reason, to the parlor; Jed knelt on the rug with the two boys and there was a set of tin soldiers among them. He did not direct either boy, but let each be captain of a squadron and answered the questions they asked in an even tone. Mattie still looked at him a trifle fearfully but Joe had found a new Union officer to worship, in lieu of his absent father, and started pushing more and more tin men toward Jed to marshal and deploy. Mary found herself sitting on the sofa, the tray of cakes and pot of coffee on a low table. It seemed to take an infinite time to pour the coffee into Caroline’s Wedgewood cup, fat-bottomed and gilt at the lip; the fragrance of the coffee filled the room and still it ran from the silver spout. When the cup was full and set down before her the cream swirled through it like desire. She found Jed regarding her and read the longing for her in his dark eyes. The toy soldiers were arrayed between them, precise and attentive to their captains, muskets cocked. She knew she would not be able to reach him. She opened her mouth to speak and Joe’s voice rang out, “Dr. Foster, Dr. Foster, the men need you! Oughtn’t you to come? Right away?” She saw Jed try and dissuade Joe, ruffling his light brown hair so like Caroline’s, but the boy’s eyes were firm and grey. Mattie had clambered onto Jed and she knew his reluctance to push the little boy off; she felt it herself nearly every night as Mattie fell asleep in her arms with his bedtime story, when she was Mamma and could not break his heart even as his head grew sweaty against her bodice, the soft breast beneath his comfort.

It seemed the game would go on forever. The coffee cooled in the cups and the cakes crumbled at the edges. The light had altered. It was the color of honey now and glowed against the boys’ cheeks, made jewels of the soldiers’ enameled uniforms. Jed’s eyes were the darkest place in the room. She felt tension of longing growing in her, along the grain of her skin and beneath it, threaded through her veins displacing the blood. It was a film on her eyes with every blink and it was thunder, drums, the minie ball’s eruption within the four chambers of her heart. She could not bear it and she also knew Aunt Mary must get the supper, must turn down two white beds and listen to the boys’ prayers. Joe would pray for his mother’s soul and Mattie would cry out to God to have her back and she would not know which hurt her worse. She rose and only Jed’s eyes followed her. The battle raged silently on the Turkey rug, wool the color of Virginia dust and blood, so much blood. She moved quickly, but not as quickly as she wished, from the room where she had everything she wanted and nothing.

She leaned against the hallway, the plaster cool against her as it had been, but not a welcome counterpoint to Jed’s heat. It pulled the warmth from her but not the spike of yearning, her love growing frantic in her. It was as much consolation as the marble stone at Caroline’s grave. Tears spilled but brought barely any relief and the opposing forces shaking her, her hopeful love and hopeless fear, brought her to a place of near stillness. She was a trigger cocked. This was how Jed found her and he hurried then, the hallway so long from the threshold of the parlor. He came to her and caught her round the waist; she felt the temptation of collapse before he started speaking.

“Oh Mary, don’t cry so, I’m here,” and because he was and because he held her so well, she found his mouth with hers and gave the first kiss. It was not shy or timid, tentative or lustful but the greeting she had wanted to give when first she opened the door. Her kiss was recognition and welcome and patience. In response, he was naked with her. She could feel all his love and desire, the fear of rejection that bit, the yearning that stroked at her and was all heat and the hunger of his suckle. She knew his relief when his hand left her waist and went to touch her cheek, then felt the petal of her eyelids.

She felt his confidence whole like a stone at the shore’s edge, like the depth of a frozen pond in a New Hampshire winter. He spoke then into her ear, not a whisper, said “Go now and make them their supper. I will help you put them to bed, and then I will take you to our bed, sweet Mary, oh my sweet wife, and you shall have everything you want and only that, I promise you.” She heard in his tone how he would respect what she asked and in his touch, how he could choose how he held her even if she felt she would break apart, melt away, or be lit up.

There the dream ended, the skein unraveled. The rose-pink dress and the oak floorboards of the hallway lost substance and she woke with his words in her mind, the words of the dream and the reality, “I can most certainly do so” and “your husband” intermingled. He had given her everything she wanted. She smiled into the night and she did not recall any other dreams when she woke at dawn. In her morning bath, she felt the touch of his mouth on hers and she was unsure if she remembered the day or the night; she laughed and put the rosewater at her throat again. She touched it to her wrists and between her breasts for him to discover.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before a day at the operating theatre, an early rising, and discovery.

August 5 1863 morning

Jed thought he would sleep later but he woke at dawn, the early dawn of summer. There was nothing in particular that woke him, perhaps a mourning dove cooed in the eaves or it was the sunlight filling the room with a diffuse pale gold that only came with summer. He awoke contented, the creature that he was warm and sated. He let his mind drift upwards to thought in a way he never could indulge in Alexandria where he might be called on to operate within minutes of pulling on his trousers and sliding his braces up. He turned in the bed, disoriented for a moment, and then had the pleasure of realizing Mary was beside him, his wife. The words beat with his heart and seemed as necessary. He had never felt this happy, had never loved a woman as he did her. Perhaps it was the way they had met, the work they had done together which breached society’s expectations of how a man and a woman would speak to each other. Or their odd courtship, conducted in letters that allowed them freedom with deliberation, Whitman’s poetry direct but also a level of remove for them to conceal themselves within, and then the sudden shock of Mary in his arms. He still could hardly believe her open desire, the insistent way she pulled at him and held him to her, how much she wanted even as she sought to set a limit on their intimacy. 

He let his eyes rest on her as she slept. Her hair was loose and her chestnut curls streamed over her shoulder. He had not known how it would stir him to see it thus, unbraided and uncontained. Her arm was visible, bare and rounded in the short sleeve of her nightdress and she was facing him, her breathing steady and quiet. He thought of the day she’d arrived at Mansion House and wondered when exactly he’d fallen in love with her. He could admit now he had been drawn to her from the minute he’d met her; he remembered the little shake of her head she’d given when he’d called her Duchess, the feel of her body still impressed along his from the moment when she’d thrown herself on him and the soldier with the gun. He had hardly been able to resist seeking her out. He crowded her, using his sharpest tone and wit to engage her. He saw now how unsure and careful she had been and how he had tried to force all the desire he had to take her in his arms into his imprecations and critiques. He looked at her again in their bed and felt the greatest tenderness for her now and then. How dear she was! He could not recall feeling so strongly about anyone in such an infinite number of ways. 

How much was he to blame for the shallow skimming of his previous relationships? He and Ezra had been close as boys but as men they had few interests in common. His decision to stand with the Union had created a breach he suspected was permanent. His parents had loved him, he supposed, but always within bounds and for specific reasons. He had loved Clara but imperfectly; she was always a little girl to him, playing at being a woman. He had not made an effort to know who she was becoming and then one misstep and she was gone. The love he had had for his mammy had the purity of childhood but now, as a man, he wondered what it could mean; she had never had a choice to care for him and his affection for her was another bond she might never have wanted. He prayed her life had not been hard as Aurelia’s, but he would never know.

And Eliza, oh Eliza! He had never bothered to name what he felt for her but it was a little thing, ephemeral, a blighted seed that could never take root. They had enjoyed each other at the start but there was no substance to it. He struggled to think what she cared for—her piano perhaps? He had found her there many afternoons, playing seriously, with intention, only to put the music in the air. He had dismissed it then, more concerned with his medical practice and science. He did not care much for music or rather, he was apprehensive of its effect on him; too often while listening to opera in Paris or even the slaves singing in their cabins at twilight, he had felt himself swept away or in the grip of emotions he could not anticipate. He preferred art that let him regard it at a distance—he wanted that state of stillness that was so hard for him to achieve otherwise, and the control that came with it.

Letting Eliza go to California had not taxed him. In fact, it let him match her physical absence with the emotional void he’d felt from her, with her, for nearly the last three years of their marriage. If there had been a child, well, then. He could not regret that any longer, not since it had allowed them to separate so much more easily, but it had been the one wish they shared until they’d both given up. After the third time she’d gotten pregnant but never quickened, she’d decided she would no longer hope for a baby and he found it was easier to sleep in his dressing room or even in the armchair before the fireplace than to go to her bed. There was nothing between them but the long years of their life stretching ahead. He could only bless her for being the braver of them both; he had never imagined she would write the letter she did, let alone send it, but she had secured his happiness then more successfully than with any other action. 

He must get up now lest he somehow wake Mary. There could not have been many days since she came back to Boston when she could afford to sleep as long as she wished and even fewer where there was someone else to take care of her. He thought that aspect of loving her would be just as hard to postpone when he left for Virginia as the obvious desire for her body. Betty seemed to know Mary well and Mary had spoken warmly of her minister and his wife, but he knew how much he wanted to be the one to tend her even now, before he had even left their bed, and he thought it might be well-nigh unbearable when he was at Mansion House again. It occurred to him that medicine would once again be his salvation, yet this time he would imagine Mary waiting for him at the end of the day, ready to hear who he had saved and which boy had bled out while he fought the death. It would be a consolation. Might she imagine him in her parlor after a day where the boys squabbled or came to her with scrapes to bandage or some of the other endless demands of childhood he vaguely recalled? Or would she miss him most in the bed they had made theirs for such a short time?

He dressed quickly and quietly in the room’s alcove, then crept downstairs. It was strange to occupy a role neither guest nor master in the home; outside of Mary’s bed, he felt himself only a tenant of sorts. He prepared to go to the kitchen and scare up some sort of meal. He could make coffee and manage with bread and butter but he found Betty already at work, queen in her castle. The table was set for them and Betty moved about effortlessly, long familiar with the kitchen’s foibles.

“Will Miss Mary, that is, Mrs. Foster be down to join you soon, Dr. Foster?” Betty said as she poured him a cup of coffee he could never have brewed. There was even a small pitcher of fresh cream, a luxury they’d been without in Virginia for months. He enjoyed Betty’s attentions, knowing she was motivated by her love of her dead mistress and Mary but was also well-paid. The kindness she showed him could be genuine and he might earn his own measure of it if he tried.

“I don’t think so, Betty. I thought to let her sleep a while, it’s early yet—I don’t imagine the little boys let her, at least, I can’t recall sleeping much after the sun rose when I was a boy. Too much trouble to get into,” he replied. She nodded at him approvingly and he liked that she wanted Mary to rest longer and that she found him an attentive husband. 

“When my furlough is up, I must leave Mar—that is, Mrs. Foster, and it would greatly ease my mind if I knew that you were making sure she does not do too much. Or too little for herself. I have not known her so long as you, but I think she was likely not much different—she would always work longer and harder than anyone else at the hospital and care for herself last. If I were here,” he paused, caught for a moment in the idea that he could stay with her, find work with Jonathan at Harvard, and come home every night to Mary, even with the boys there for them to raise, “I would make sure myself that she was properly cared for but there is only so much I may do from Virginia. Would you help me, Betty, and never let her know we are conspiring for her ease?” he finished. He suspected Betty would be quite willing to join him and he was rewarded by her laughter.

“Yes, Dr. Foster, I will and you may count on it. Though I will say, the change in Mrs. Foster ever since she started getting those letters, that is, your letters—it was like we had back our Miss Mary from when she was a girl. Ev’ry time, she’d be lit up like a candle and didn’t those naughty boys do well from it, extra sweets and kisses all round. But I’ve still seen her fall into her old ways, so I’ll do what I can then,” she said. He was happy to have such an ally and smiled broadly at her. “I suppose you’d like something more than just your coffee, though? What will you be wanting?”

He could hardly think of food though he was hungry. “Oh, whatever is easiest. The menu in Virginia runs mostly to cornbread and stewed fruit these days.”

“I’ll make you what I’d make Mr. Barnes then. He’s always glad of something hearty in the morning and he’s never complained about my cooking,” she said. Had he ever had such a conversation before? Betty was completely comfortable talking to him, in fact, he thought she might well take him to task if she felt he was failing Mary in any way. This household was much less luxurious than what he was used to before the War, but he found the simplicity and New England forthrightness far more appealing.

“Thank you, Betty,” he replied. What peace there was in sitting at a polished table, able to wait for a generous meal, nothing stinted but not overly elaborate, and above him, his wife sleeping so sweetly in their bed!

“You’re welcome. It’ll only be a few minutes, without those boys running about,” Betty said, with a final nod before she walked back into her kitchen and started the homely noise of a meal being prepared. Shortly, she set before him a plate of eggs, oatmeal porridge with cream, applesauce pink from the cooked skins. 

“I’m sorry, Dr. Foster, we haven’t any bacon or ham for you, but it’s been runnin’ a bit dear at the market and none of them now care for it so much,” Betty said as she stepped back. There was a scent of some spice she’d added to the porridge, elusive to him. Her comments about Mary and the boys sparked the curiosity that his mother, in a fonder moment, had described as “never idle, not you, Jedediah.”

“What do they generally eat, then?” he asked.

“The boys have their porridge and milk and Miss Mar—Mrs. Foster likes a boiled egg if we have them, and toast with marmalade and plenty of coffee, these days. It’s all she can do to keep Joe, he’s the older one you know, at the table and mindin’ his manners. She’s taken on a lot with those two, but they love their Aunt Mary dearly, always have. Hard for them all, though, missing their mother so much. She was a sweet woman, Mrs. Barnes, though a mite too soft with those boys,” Betty offered, her insight not just in the what she said, but her tone of voice while she said it. She’d clearly cared for Mary and her sister since they were quite young; she spoke of them more as her own nieces than employers and he thought Mary was her favorite just as she favored the older more troublesome boy.

“And now you must eat your meal while it’s hot, Dr. Foster, and I’ll be about my business. Mrs. Foster generally sits in the parlor after breakfast, I expect you’ll find it suits you if you need to prepare for your work later today or you want a quiet place to read away from this kitchen. The stove can be a bit ornery and my, we have our battles, she and I!” Betty said with another wry laugh. She reminded him a bit of Matron Brannan and he spared a thought of Mansion House and its denizens. 

How did Hale do without his opposition? Could the saw cut without the bone to resist? Hastings had settled since Mary left and Miss Furness arrived, finally recognizing she would not attain the Head Nurse’s position herself. He wondered at Miss Dix’s remote calculus; what did she know of Anne Hastings, an experienced nurse with the highest qualifications available to a woman, that made Miss Dix pass her over again? Miss Nightingale’s imprimatur was worth the braggadocio Hastings preferred even if her manner was occasionally repellent to the staff. And what of little Miss Green, Mary’s especial friend? He had a fellow-feeling for her, a Southerner in league with Yankees, used to a way of life that would fall away when the Union, with God’s help, held strong. Her family was a cipher to him which was in truth remarkable—to know a woman without reference to her father, her brother, her husband. She was part of the Mansion House in a way no other there was but she was like Aphrodite, sprung whole from the formless waves, and nearly as lovely.

He realized he’d eaten the entire meal while he mused, quickly and neatly, as Mansion House had trained him. He heard Betty in the kitchen but there was no sound from the upper floors. Mary still slept then. It was barely half-past seven and he’d agreed they would meet Jonathan Harris in his rooms for a little breakfast at nine and then off to the theatre for the ten o’clock lecture. He would retire to the parlor and see what he could find to read, a gentleman at his leisure once again. He left behind the evidence of his satisfaction, hardly a spoonful of porridge or smear of yolk on the china. A few grounds lingered in the well of the cup. Jed walked to the parlor. In the early morning light, it was quite a pleasant room with a cheerful aspect, the walls with their vined papers and the curtains drawn back. There was a settee in yellow silk and a few more comfortable chairs, ideal for reading. Two tall bookcases flanked the front windows and the books were attractively arranged with bric-a-brac placed here and there. A lady’s desk, its legs fluted, a golden silk tassel hanging from each drawer pull, had place of pride under the window. It was more disordered than he would have expected. There were several papers held down with a crystal paperweight and some books piled in a tower that was nearly precarious. He could not resist the lure.

The papers were a few bills, from the grocer and other tradesmen, and he saw a letter in a crabbed hand that spoke of age, addressed to “My dear niece.” The books held more interest—he saw a green prayer book, sized for a woman’s hand, but also a thicker book in German and a mathematics text, slender but with contents nearly incomprehensible to him. At the base of this tower was a larger book with a leather cover. A monogram, CBP, was tooled in gold in the bottom corner and when he opened it, he found it was a sketchbook half-filled. The weave of the heavy paper was a little like a bandage.

It must have belonged to Mary’s sister Caroline, he thought. He began to leaf through the pages, wondering what he might learn of the woman missing from this house. Mary had told him a little when they walked the cobbled streets. It would be a very different way to understand a person, the true self reflected in the representations she chose to make. Mary had spoken openly of Caroline so he thought she would not be too bothered if he looked at the drawings. The first few pages were of flowers. He recognized a rose, a lily. Caroline had struggled with a patch of violets and they missed the vividness that indigo and ochre would have brought, even a tracing of viridian green to a stem or the lip of a leaf. He thought she had not liked making those drawings so well; the lines were more haphazard or at times overworked, a distortion she saw but could not correct. Then the pictures changed and he began to know her more. There were pages of people, mostly the two boys he had not met, Mary’s nephews. 

The older had the longer face of a growing child, the bones more distinct but drawn with the confidence of someone who had washed that face, examined it for rash or fever, had drawn her fingers along the crest of cheekbone for the pleasure of it. The younger boy still had the look of a well-loved baby. His mouth was curved, the purse of the lips held the memory of nursing and the round eyes the same intention. Here they were playing, here sitting in a window-seat with a book. Some were lightly touched with water-color but most were in pencil. Jed remembered Ingres’s pencil drawings he’d seen in galleries in Paris; Caroline’s were less adept to be sure but they evoked the same feeling, the conviction of the subject and the artist harmonic. He saw Joe’s intrepid nature and sensitivity, little Mattie’s affection and patience. They slept curled in their beds, hands individual as a second face on the pillows beside their cheeks. She drew others, not as frequently. Betty was at the stove or with a mixing bowl before her, she sat in a rocker in the corner of the kitchen with a basket at her feet, the gravity of Hestia about her eyes but not in her small smile. Another child, a neighbor perhaps, playing with Joe or a tall woman in the doorway of her own brownstone, her hand held aloft in a wave. The pattern on her blouse was pricked out with rust and crimson. He perceived Caroline’s deliberation, her intensity and her gentleness, how quickly she could illuminate the beauty in her domestic round. He thought of his own mother and appreciated Caroline’s devotion to her children, the depth of her affection for them. He began to see how much like Mary she must have been and how Mary’s loss was doubled. Caroline had not been only her sister, but a true friend, so well-matched were they.

He was turning the page to see the view from the window he stood before, the lines trig, the image permanent as glass, when he felt Mary behind him. She looped her arms around him lightly and laid her face against his back. He put the book down and turned to take her in his arms properly. Ah, there she was! He enjoyed the feeling of simply holding her even more now that he could call up her bared body beneath the dress and his own layers. She was fragrant and soft and stood quietly. He felt the pleasure of knowing how much he soothed her. What had never been enough for anyone else seemed to be all she needed. He let his arms fall and he caught her hand in his. He looked down at her face and saw her candid glance.

“Good morning. I think you have slept enough then?” he greeted her. One day, this would be the commonplace and unremarkable; the prospect was a gladness of its own.

“Oh yes, you and Betty both have let me sleep so late, I thought it must be noon! She said you have had your breakfast though and have just been sitting in here since, ‘no trouble at all, not like some unruly boys in this house,’ she said. Already, I think she will make a pet of you,” Mary replied. She squeezed his hand a little.

“I will have to stay on my best behavior then. I would not like to lose Betty’s good opinion. Have you eaten yet?” he said.

“A little, I had some coffee and there were fresh biscuits. Betty has decided to spoil me and she didn’t even bother to deny it. What have you been doing in here, quiet as a mouse?” Mary asked. He thought he saw a little of a younger Mary, made happy easily with a fresh biscuit with honey, the man she wanted waiting for her, sunshine bright.

“Looking about, seeing the books in the shelves at first, but then I found the sketchbook on the desk. I hope you aren’t distressed I looked at it, I know I should have asked first but that is not always my strong suit,” he admitted. He didn’t think she would be angry but he could well have waited for her permission.

“No, no, don’t trouble yourself about that,” she said and her voice was still even. He’d grown to know every half-step in Eliza’s key, what meant anger and what frustration, but it had taken them a while and many arguments along the way. He was already more accustomed to Mary’s voice from Mansion House and she never sought to make him guess her mood when he inquired with his gesture or gaze.

“Your sister was a remarkable artist. I think she did not care much for botanical drawing, but the rest are exquisite. So sensitive, so finely drawn and yet entirely confident. You both were gifted it seemed—had you a very good teacher or did you two find your way with only each other as mentor?” he asked. Mary was better educated than most of the women he knew despite her relative lack of wealth. There had been one family in near his who employed an English and French governess for their two daughters so they would be fluent in French and better read altogether. Clara had thought it unfair they had two such playmates but her pestering their father to even share the lessons had come to nothing. Mary read seriously, in German and French as well as English, and liked mathematics; the text he’d found had been labeled with her own name, the loops on the y’s of Mary and Phinney exuberant. 

“Oh, well, we had a little bit of drawing instruction at the ladies’ academy, but I think, that is, those are not Caroline’s drawings, well, not exactly,” Mary said, startled. Jed only waited to see what she would say next.

“I know her monogram is on the cover and the first few drawings are hers, the flowers, but the rest, those, they are mine. I found the sketchbook shortly after I got here and it felt like, if I drew in it with her drawings still there, she wasn’t gone so much from me. I suppose you haven’t looked all the way through or you would have guessed,” she replied. Now Jed was the one startled, all the thoughts he’d had about Caroline irrelevant and his understanding of Mary once again clearly imperfect. He would have to start to see the pictures reflecting Mary’s vision, the depth of her emotion. He felt as if he had walked through a dim wooded glade and come out into a vast meadow, ringed round with trees, a secret place of bluebells and bees and there would be Mary. And how ever would he have guessed she was the artist?

He must have looked quizzical because she reach over the picked up the sketchbook, turned the pages beyond where he had looked. Neat white cuffs peeked from beneath the full sleeves of her dark blue dress.

“I think you would have wondered if you had seen these, how it could be Caroline who drew,” and she showed him a page of his own hands, holding the scalpel, a pen, folded together as if in prayer. All those surgeries, all the nights she had set a plate before him at the officers’ mess, when she found him trying to outwait the pain of another boy’s death on the bench on the hall, his hands gripping the wooden edge—all those times and more she had looked at him and seen. Here they were, his care and determination, clever, anguished, hopeful. And then she turned the page and he saw his own face, the eyes dark, jaw firm beneath his beard. Again, pages with primarily his own face but also Emma Green’s delicate head, the curls clustered at her nape and Henry Hopkins’s mute longing in the cut of his mouth. There was even the appraising glance Hastings would give to Mary and the solemn face Anne would show to a man who knew he would die that night. Interspersed with pictures of Mattie clearly on Mary’s lap or Betty scolding Joe, there were soldiers with dead faces and surgeries that went wrong; there was the woman from Connecticut who had screamed herself hoarse when they told her her son had died before she arrived. The only color on these pages was grey and a red so dark it was rust and blood and poppy mixed. “I guess I am glad you are seeing these with me here beside you, though perhaps you would have liked to better to be alone, I don’t know.”

He looked at her and saw she was somehow unsure of herself, as if seeing her drawings could in some way make him more distant from her, make him want her less. Christ! He had not thought he could want her more, could not have loved her any more, and he had been wrong. Did she think he would be repelled by how honestly she drew all the destruction around her, all the people she cared about most and wanted to keep close to her? Was that simply what the world told her or had he done something to make her think it? He reached for her hand, the one that had turned the pages, the one that had made the drawings and used it to pull her back to him.

“You are such a blessing, Mary Foster, and I love you. I cannot say I should have guessed these were your drawings but I see I’ll have to prepare myself for other ways you’ll surprise me. I want to look at these again with you and if you’ll allow me, even alone,” he said, then drew her back into his arms, very close, and whispered into the smooth wing of her hair, “Oh my dearest, you are such a marvel, your true heart and your mind, how you take the dross around you and find such treasure, ‘O to return to Paradise!/O to draw you to me--” And he pressed his cheek against hers, closer than a kiss, and he heard her as he felt her jaw move, her other hand steal up to his heart.

“And I love you, my Jedediah, oh so much.” He felt they were married again, truer selves shared and thought here was a difference he could admit without ire or guilt about his first and second marriages, how he wanted to know Mary more even as he discovered her. Perhaps for her, it was not such a change, but to feel her closer even as he found a degree of remove was nothing like what it had been with Eliza.

“Let us sit together a bit, there is a little time before we must go I think, and we may look at the sketchbook if you like, or we may tell each other stories we haven’t shared yet. And I think we will have to discuss the demonstration today, how you plan to go about it and what you will want from me,” Mary said, leading him to the yellow sofa which was far less formal when she was next to him. Her skirts spread like the night across the sun, but the eclipse was not ominous with the feel of her palm against his, the calluses from her work, how she held her pencil. The sounds of Betty in the hall with her broom drifted in and sometimes the brisk trot of a pair of bays pulling a landau. He did not let himself think of leaving, of Virginia and the time until the War ended, even how he would arrange his instruments for the procedure later today; Jonathan had hoped for a trephination if Jed deemed the patient a candidate. He only would think of Mary and how she would draw this later, maybe even tonight with the room lit with lamps. She might sit in the armchair with the book in her lap or in their bed where she could draw wearing her nightdress only. The pages of the book would be white like the muslin folds and the tip of the pencil dark like her loose chestnut curls, her bright eyes, the slice of night visible through the curtains. He would think of that while she started telling him the story of the very particular art tutor at her academy and the trip she and Caroline had made to Portland when she was fourteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have used the idea of Mary as an artist in my own stories, but I originally had it from "Not words." I had a very clear picture of Jed coming across Mary's sketchbook in the parlor and learning about her nephews from the pictures she'd drawn. Obviously, that's been expanded a bit here. If you didn't guess, Jed quotes a bit more from Whitman to Mary at the end, again from Enfans d'Adam. I had to do a bit of hasty editing to get the chronology to work when I re-read the original more closely and saw they had had breakfast with Jonathan Harris, but I hope it still works!

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a gift for emmadelosnardos, whose "Not words" has brought so much pleasure to so many of us. These are two additional scenes I imagined when I was reading and she has been gracious enough to let me write them out. I think they could each be a stand-alone, but they are designed to work better within the framework of her story. I have tried pretty hard to respect her timeline but please forgive me any clumsiness.
> 
> Also, I borrowed the title from Whitman, specifically Enfans D'Adam, to remain in keeping with the original work.


End file.
